JLE

Journal de Pharmacie Clinique

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Clozapine in the treatment of adolescents: case report of an adolescent resistant to conventional neuroleptic Volume 20, issue 2, Juin 2001

Authors
Service pharmacie, Centre hospitalier de Saint-Égrève, BP 100, 38120 Saint-Egrève.

Efficacy and tolerability of clozapine, an atypical antipsychotic, is greater than conventional neuroleptics. However clozapine does not have the pediatric licence. In the first part of this paper, we present a brief literature review on the use of clozapine in pediatric. It reveals about 56 to 88 % improvement in the hallucinatory and aggressiveness syndromes of adolescents patients. Reintegrating normal social life becomes possible for children. Moreover, clozapine tolerance for children and adolescents is the same as for adults. Mean dosage is about 240 to 370 mg.d- 1 (range 50 to 900 mg). The second part presents the medical story of a 14 years old girl, suffering from self and heteroaggressivity. She was treated during more than one year with different conventional neuroleptics, without any success. Then, her treatment was changed to clozapine. This case report underlines the difficulty in the psychiatric treatment of patients under 15-years old.